Pot Valet believe cannabis growing companies are creating their own marijuana strains and protecting them with trademark laws with profits taking priority over the rights of patients to access genetically pure medication.

Here a few of the issues highlighted by the article and as time crawls toward a fully regulated Californian cannabis market we’d suggest the issues will only further compound.

A trademark environment in the cannabis industry can endanger the genetic purity of the marijuana plant. Companies are spending vast sums of money creating strains nobody will ever hear about in an already strain-flooded market. If the goal of strain breeding is to trademark varieties for future profits, there is a real risk of monopolies forming that can undermine the quality of genetically pure strains.

Creating strains willy-nilly will create chaos in the marijuana industry. Not only will finding the correct strains become an overwhelming task for medical patients, but many ‘breeders’ will also not comply with proper breeding and registration practices. Creating quality strains requires a database of information about parents, chemical levels, and other crucial characteristics of every strain created.